50 Jews. In a speech in Brooklyn earlier this year, Sharpton not only compared Giuliani to Nebuchadnezzar but com- pared himself and his cohorts Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who declined Nebuchadnezzar's order to "bow down or bum." The Biblical trio emerged safely from the fiery furnace, into which they had been thrown as punishment by N ebuchadl)ezzar for not complying with his rule that whenever those in his king- dom heard the sound of the harp, the sackbut, the dulcimer, or other music they must fall down and worship hIs golden image. Because Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came through unscathed, Nebuchadnezzar decreed that no one speak ill of them, and then promoted them It is unclear what message this has for present-day local politics. Though the Mayor did not have easy access to a sackbut, he did perform some musical numbers in the traditional Mayor's rebuttal at the Inner Circle, the annual lampoon of local politics by present and former City Hall reporters. This year's show, on March 12th, was called "It's Howdy Rudy Time," surely a more mayor-friendly title than one of those in the Dinkins era: "Empty Pock- ets, Empty Suits." A reporter who played Sharpton declared himself to be the Leader of the Blacks, and sang, "Blacks feel so helpless, What should we do? We won't shut up 'til Rudy is through!" Sharpton was not in the audience, nor was there anything like the percentage of blacks among the fifteen hundred guests-con- sisting hrgely of city officials and cotporate leaders-there was last year, when City Hall was presIded over by Dinkins- who wasn't at this year's show. However, Giuliani himself: in the Mayor's rebut- tal, made a joke about "the two-white- guys memo." This memorandum, which had been obtained by Paul Schwartz- man, of the Daily News, was ttom Deputy Mayor John Dyson, who is one of Giu- liani's three white deputy mayors. (A fourth, Ninfa Segarra, is Hispanic, but so far she hasn't been given much to do.) The memo was written to Peter Powers, who has been Giuliani's friend since childhood, and is now the second most powerful man on the Mayor's side of City Hall. It quoted a News article that had referred to Giuliani and Powers as "two white men with no City Hall expe- rience who must hold an increasingly di- verse immigrant city together." Dyson's advice to Powers was "Do not worry. L 'Tt took me ten months to get him to s y yes!" THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 28, 1994 Two white guys have been running this city of immigrants for over 200 years!" The alleged purpose of the Mayor's rebuttal was to deal with the charges that he was, as he put it, "a humorless, up- tight, ruthless prosecutor." As is custom- ary in mayoral rebuttals, Giuliani had called on the stars of a Broadway show to help him out; this time, it was "My Fair Lady." Although the Mayor is a big opera fan, he sounded close to tone- deaf as he sang some specially written lyrics. "I Shall Never Let a Woman in My Life!" became, for example, "I Will Never Let the Media Run My Life," which gave him a chance to gibe at the press, with which he has been on poor terms. There, also, he turned out to be a bit tone-deat He made jokes about re- porters by name, describing them as old ("very old"), so long out of work that it seemed "terminal," too fat, incapable of writing English, and, in one case, wearing a hairpiece. This was a rather risky ploy, since David Letterman had once described Giuliani as New York's most controversial mayor: "All over this city people are screaming 'It's a comb- over!' 'No, it's a bad hairpiece!' 'No, it's a b f ' " com -over. O N March 10th, the nlnety-one- year-old Rebbe had a stroke, his second. In the followIng days, the streets and sidewalks around Beth Israel Medi- cal Center, on East Seventeenth Street, where he was taken, were filled with Luba- vitchers in their long dark coats and felt hats, praying for him. The Mayor, yar- mulke in hand, made a pilgrimage to the hospital. It seemed that a death-watch mode had been entered into, except that it was the profound belief of many Lubavitchers that the Rebbe was the Messiah, or Moshiach, who would never die. 'We don't entertain that possibility," explained one of his Brooklyn followers. In the Rebbe's active days, when he was driven anywhere in the city he always travelled with a police escort, a privilege awarded to him mayor in and mayor out. This was a source of deep resentment among many of his neighbors, who have pointed out that there are other promi- nent Crown Heights religious figures, and they get no such treatment, although their total constituents far outnumber the Lubavitchers. According to City Plan- ning Department figures of a little over a year ago, the two official Community